A Wrinkle in Time

Science fiction

First published: 1962
Print length: 245 pagesSquare Fish, 2007

Newbery Medal, 1963

Description

Meg Murry’s father disappeared while researching the tesseract, a way of folding space-time to cross immense distances. Guided by supernatural beings, Meg, her gifted younger brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O’Keefe travel across the universe to find him. Their first destination, the luminous planet Uriel, reveals that the disappearance belongs to a wider cosmic struggle against the Black Thing, a darkness spreading over many worlds, including Earth. The search eventually leads to Camazotz, where the children must confront an oppressive power while depending on qualities in one another that ordinary life has often treated as weaknesses. The novel joins interplanetary adventure with a family rescue story about individuality, courage, and connection under pressure.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Direct · Lyrical

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Atmospheric · Hopeful · Philosophical · Tense

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Ideas · Plot

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

BelongingFamilyIdentityKnowledge and truthLoveOppression

About Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L’Engle was an American writer whose career ranged across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. After publishing her first novels in the 1940s, she endured repeated rejection and even considered abandoning writing, an experience that underscores the persistence behind her later success. Her best-known book, the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time, established a characteristic method: bringing science fiction and fantasy into the intimate world of family loyalties, vulnerable young people, and difficult moral choices. The related Murry novels widen that approach through cosmic conflict, illness, time travel, biblical history, and the threat of nuclear war, while keeping ideas tied to the fate of particular characters. L’Engle’s prose could be direct and descriptive or more lyrical and atmospheric, depending on the scale of the story. Her nonfiction, including Walking on Water, makes explicit another enduring concern: the relationship between faith, artistic practice, close attention, and honest creation.

Series

Time Quintet · Book 1

A Wrinkle in Time Quintet · Book 1

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Square Fish
Language: English
ISBN: 9780312367541

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